Man-made and mined diamonds have long been a source of heated controversy. The iconic gemstone has been used as a symbol of love and commitment for centuries, but the idea that natural diamonds are rare, scarce and unobtainable is misleading at best. The truth is that it’s easy to find diamonds of comparable size, color and clarity—and even a little bit cheaper—in a lab.
In fact, if you were to place a lab https://techsslash.com/discover-the-charm-of-breslauer-warren-jewellers-your-premier-calgary-jewelry-store/ diamond side by side with a natural one of the same size and shape, a gemologist could not tell the difference using a loupe (magnification device). But that doesn’t mean that there are no differences in price, resale value, and overall desirability. In an effort to combat this perception, De Beers worked hard to cultivate the phrase “A diamond is forever” to help boost sales during World War II, but this was not the only reason for their marketing campaign. They manipulated the image of diamonds to benefit their bottom line, and it was not until the 1980s that competition in the market was allowed to take off.
Today, lab diamonds are a significant competitor to natural ones in the market. The majority of lab-created diamonds are produced in China, and they can be found in a variety of shapes, sizes and qualities. However, there is still a huge difference in the prices of the two types of stones. At the beginning of 2017, a report from Forbes compared 12 pairs of real and lab-created diamonds, finding that on average, lab-created diamonds were 23% more expensive than similar natural ones.
The main difference between natural and lab diamonds is that the former are grown in nature, forming under extreme heat and pressure over billions of years, while the latter are created in a laboratory in just a few weeks. There is also a slight chemical difference, with natural diamonds containing nitrogen while lab-created diamonds do not.
There are two major methods of creating lab diamonds: high-pressure, high-temperature HPHT and chemical vapor deposition (CVD). With the former, a seed is placed in a chamber with carbon-rich gas that’s been heated to very high temperatures and pressurised at about 13,000 pounds per square inch, replicating the conditions of Earth’s mantle. The diamonds then grow atom by atom, and once they’re mature enough, they are removed from the chamber and cut, polished and graded.
The CVD method is much more recent, and it uses a different process to produce the diamonds. In this case, the seed is placed in a chamber with methane and other carbon-rich gases that are heated at very high temperatures to break apart their molecules, releasing carbon atoms. The diamonds are then formed based on the structure of carbon, with the atoms sticking together forming a crystal lattice. Once the diamonds are mature, they are cut and polished and sent to a grading lab for inspection. This is where they will be labelled as either HPHT or CVD.